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I first saw Layal at a TV station north of Beirut. She was photographing the launch of a new album for the paparazzi magazine Al Jars. I ran into her later while I was drinking whisky with Roola Saad, model and singer, at an exclusive performance in an Ashrafieh nightclub. She took my picture. It was too loud to talk. I left Beirut a few days before the Israelis destroyed the airport. When I got home the pictures sat on my shelf. I couldn't bring myself to look at Beirut as it was, prosperous, stylish, cosmopolitan. |
I'd been drawn to the city by the way the rest of the Arab world looked to it as a kind of secular Mecca, a place where people made epic music videos, tales of boy meets girl, girl dies tragically, boy drifts aimlessly around the Mediterranean in a yacht. On 23 July Layal Najib, photographer, 23, was torn apart by an Israeli bomb in southern Lebanon. |
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